• WHEN I GROW UP

    It has taken 67 years, but I have finally arrived at what I want to do and be when I finally grow up, which should happen any day now, but please don’t hold your breath. In this modern age, there is an ever present and growing need for euphemists, and I am perfectly suited for…


  • MORNING SICKNESS

    Early this morning the sky was pregnant with the rain that would inundate our afternoon, the sun a struggling visitor then, deciding the battle was lost and sliding away behind the clouds. It is afternoon now and our thoughts of the morning have been washed away, the plants no longer thirsty, risk drowning. We live…


  • ERR GO

    There is a reason for all things and therefore there is a reason for this although we cannot begin to fathom what that reason could possibly be, which should be reason enough, for reason has a twisted soul: now playful, now angry, now vengeful in irregular turns without warning. The problem with seeking the reason…


  • UNKO SENDS CLOTHES 鐵笛倒吹 七十八

    If I receive warm under robes to ease my winter meditation I will refuse them. If you ask me why, I will say I was born with such robes as I need. If you ask what I wore before birth I shall remain silent. In the deepest winter there is no chill that can reach…


  • OR NOT

    He screwed up his face into the scowl that fairly shouted to all, “Don’t Ask!”. She knew better but knew also that she had no choice, “What’s the matter now?” “It’s just,” he said, softening a bit, “that I so seldom get the weather I need, much less the weather I want, it’s never the…


  • THE SPACE BETWEEN

      The space between want and need is at once a vast gulf and the width of the hair, much the same as that separating luck and greed. It is only in the eyes mind that the gap is insurmountable and we give up hope that those who live in the land of wants will…


  • AROUND IT

    It is remarkably simple, really, a single circular brush stroke in a monochrome black on rice paper, always nearly perfectly round, never is the circle complete, always some small thing left wanting. You stare at it, more at the small gap, imagining it filled, hoping it cannot be for it holds out the promise that…


  • TAI YRA MANO MOTINA (THIS IS MY MOTHER)

    It’s odd how your stature has grown as I dream of you occasionally staring at your yearbook picture. It was only four years ago that I knew you existed, but hadn’t the faintest idea of who you were, anything about your life, why you gave me up, and, therefore who it was I might have…


  • THE POET’S JOURNEY

    Between here and there is an infinite gulf, and finding yourself here yet needing to get there, what will you do when you discover that all you have is this pen?